Yahoo Music: You've got three months

Yahoo Music Unlimited is reminding its users this week that it is shutting its doors by the end of the month. The company will also turn off its DRM licensing servers, which means that users won't be able to acquire any new licenses for the Windows Media DRMed downloads they "bought" for 99 cents each. From the email sent to customers:
"Purchased music that you downloaded to authorized computers or devices will continue to play on those devices, unless you upgrade your operating system. If you attempt to transfer purchased downloads to an additional or previously unauthorized computer or device, your music will not play on those new computers or devices."

So better don't get any funky ideas and buy yourself one of those Sansa players, because your Yahoo music won't work on them, even though the company previously promised it would. Yahoo's advice is to back up your songs by burning audio CDs and ripping them in the MP3 file format, thereby effectively circumventing the DRM.

This isn't the first time users of an online music store have to find out the hard way that they don't actually own the music they paid for it it is protected with DRM. Microsoft got a lot of grief when it turned off its licensing servers for its discontinued MSN music store this summer.

It seems like Yahoo has learned from this fiasco: The company is offering free download gift certificates for Rhapsody's MP3 store for anyone having trouble with the DRM after Setember 30th. The only downside: You have to make your claim until the end of this year, or you'll be stuck with a bunch of worthless DRM garbage.